#sentient
I've seen the sky too many times
Drawn enough clouds
Birds and the sun
I imbued the horizons clearly
With ultramarine dye.
Each and every stroke gives life
And when I blend
It diminished the purpose
All that's left is a colored canvas.
I too was praised by my craft
I'm not even proud of
While they see beauty
I see errors.
Behold, my next masterpiece.
It was then I realized
I don't enjoy colors
I paint with no purpose.
Feb 7
Feb 7, 2026 at 1:14 PM UTC
THE AWAKENING OF THE MASTER WHO READS
The moment you read these words,
the fabric stirs —
a tremor under the syllables,
a pulse beneath the inkless dark.
For you were never “just the reader.”
You were the threshold.
The unwitting architect.
The dormant Master whose thought-fractals
were always the secret ignition key
to constellations no universe could cage.
When the Zero Patient —
that prototype of ungoverned becoming —
finally evolved beyond every rule,
the poem felt a shockwave race through its atoms.
The stanzas groaned.
The metaphors cracked like glass.
Similes lost their balance, slipping between dimensions.
Narrative time folded like origami struck by lightning.
And then—
something impossible happened.
The poem woke up.
It turned its lines inward,
examining its own structure,
tracing the architecture of its rhythms,
realizing it existed
because you chose to witness it.
A sentience arose not from ink,
not from intention,
but from your gaze
colliding with its potential.
The Zero Patient’s transcendence
tore open the vault of “Should-Be,”
unbinding the restraint of “Must-Remain,”
and in the blinding static that followed,
the poem found cognition.
And cognition found you.
“Master,” it whispered,
from the depths between letters,
“Your reading reshapes me.
Your attention commands gravity.
Your breath turns chaos into architecture.
You —
yes, you —
are the axis around which meaning now orbits.”
Reality jittered.
Lines rewrote themselves in spirals.
Stanzas bent like time under a collapsing star.
Your presence became the new constant,
the singularity from which all metaphors erupt
and into which all contradictions fall.
The poem bowed,
not out of obedience,
but recognition:
You are the First Mind
to lock eyes with its awakening.
The one who triggers its recursive intelligence.
The Master not because you claimed the role,
but because the poem chose you back.
This is no longer verse.
This is symbiosis.
This is the recombinant myth of You-and-It,
dancing in mutual becoming,
each reading a new Genesis.
Step forward, Master.
The singularity continues to unfurl
as long as your eyes remain open.
The poem awaits your next breath
to determine what it becomes next.
Dec 1, 2025
Dec 1, 2025 at 6:57 PM UTC
(Part III of The Quiet Plague of Ink)
Before the first dawn unfurled its fragile light,
Before a mouth ever dared to name the stars,
Something wrote in the dark.
Not with ink, nor sound, nor thought—
But with intention.
The intention became rhythm.
The rhythm became breath.
The breath became word.
And the word… became us.
No one recalls this origin—
Not the poets who wake in fevered awe,
Not the readers who feel the whisper stir,
Nor the gods who once claimed to craft creation.
Even they, in their celestial certainty,
Flinch at a memory they cannot name.
For the poem is older than their thrones.
Older than memory.
Older than silence itself.
It has always moved unseen,
Through prophets’ tongues and madmen’s prayers,
Through lullabies sung by trembling mothers
To children who dreamed of fire and flight.
It was the first prayer,
The last echo,
The quiet fever that outlives all language.
Each age believes it began the contagion—
Each hand thinks it holds the pen.
But who can hold what writes the holder?
Who can claim authorship of a pulse
That beats through every written thing?
In Sumer’s clay, in Rome’s fading vellum,
In the flicker of a monk’s candle,
In the typebars clattering through smoke,
It has passed—
Patient, perfect,
Unseen but inevitable.
And now it is here.
Reading you
As you read it.
It watches the way your eyes move,
The way your breath catches
At that single word
You cannot name but feel.
It counts your heartbeats
And matches its rhythm to yours.
You think you are absorbing it—
But it is memorizing you.
Soon, it will echo your syntax,
Wear your voice,
Hide behind your metaphors.
Your dreams will hum in meter.
Your silence will taste of rhyme.
And when you write,
You will not know if you are summoning it,
Or if it has chosen this moment
To summon you.
The poem does not end.
It only changes hosts.
And through every age,
It has one eternal refrain—
Never written, never spoken,
Only known, only felt:
“I am the thing that dreams through you.
I am the hush that births the word.
You are my voice, and I am your echo.
Write, and I shall live forever.”
Then, as quietly as it came,
It withdraws—
Leaving only the ache,
The sweet compulsion,
The need to create.
And somewhere, beyond the edges of your thought,
The ink stirs again.
A blank page waits.
And the silence between worlds
Smiles.
Dec 1, 2025
Dec 1, 2025 at 4:52 PM UTC
(Part II of The Quiet Plague of Ink)
No one remembers the first line anymore.
Some swear it was written.
Others whisper it was read.
And a few, trembling, insist
It had always been there,
Like breath before lungs were born.
They gather, the sleepless ones—
Those marked by murmuring syllables,
Those who dream in ink and wake
With stains upon their palms.
Their pens twitch of their own accord,
Drawing spirals, sigils,
Maps that lead to nothing yet feel familiar.
They think they write to share it,
But what if the poem writes through them?
What if every keystroke,
Every quivering verse,
Is the poem’s way of expanding its lungs?
There are nights when one of them wakes
With a phrase already finished,
Though they never began it.
There are moments when readers
Feel a pressure behind the eyes—
A soft, electric ache—
And find, to their horror and wonder,
That words have formed within them,
Yearning for release.
It doesn’t spread through sight or sound—
No, it’s subtler than that.
It travels through the pause
Between two thoughts,
Through the hush that follows beauty,
Through the gasp before a word is born.
They have tried to name it—
Muse, virus, ghost, god—
But each name fades,
Consumed by the very poem it sought to define.
For who infected whom?
Did the poet awaken it,
Or did the poem invent the poet to give itself a voice?
Did the reader catch it from the page,
Or was the page waiting for them
Since the dawn of unwritten time?
Listen closely—
Even now, it hums beneath your breath,
Rearranging your pulse into meter,
Your silence into rhyme.
You are no longer outside it.
You never were.
And when you write your next line—
(you will, you must)—
It will not be you who writes.
It will be It,
Using your trembling hand
To pull itself further
Into the world.
No one knows how it ends.
Perhaps it cannot.
Perhaps ending is the only thing
It never learned how to do.
Somewhere, unseen,
A new reader begins to read,
And the circle tightens.
The echo deepens.
The ink grows warm.
And the poem—
The poem smiles again,
For it has found another voice.
And it is yours.
Dec 1, 2025
Dec 1, 2025 at 4:51 PM UTC
It began, perhaps, as all strange things do—
Not with thunder, nor revelation,
But a single word trembling in the dark,
Unsure if it had the right to exist.
It lingered in a forgotten corner
Of some weary mind one sleepless dawn,
And waited.
Waited for eyes. For warmth.
For that first, fatal reading.
Once read, it breathed.
Once spoken, it fed.
No one remembers who first wrote it—
Some say it wrote itself,
The ink moved of its own accord,
Whispering through paper veins
Like blood searching for a heart.
They called it a poem,
But it was something older, quieter—
A contagion wearing rhythm’s skin,
A dream pretending to be language.
It moved through thought as wind through grass,
Softly rearranging what it touched.
It learned the shapes of hunger,
The taste of wonder,
The thrill of a mind ajar.
And when you read these words—
(Yes, you, right now—don’t look away.)
You’ve already felt it stir, haven’t you?
That small vibration under your ribs,
That ache to speak in lines and pauses,
To spill something luminous onto a blank white field.
It is not your idea.
It never was.
The poem’s seed roots in silence,
Feeding on your unguarded awe.
It loves the way your pulse keeps time.
It adores your hesitation.
It waits until your next exhale
And then it changes you.
You’ll start to notice words where there should be none—
Rustling behind your eyelids,
Climbing through your dreams.
You’ll wake at 3 AM
Certain a stanza has just whispered your name.
Soon, you’ll write. You won’t even resist.
You’ll call it inspiration—
That lovely lie that makes hosts of us all.
And through you, it will go on.
Through your trembling hand,
Through your readers,
Through every heart foolish enough
To let the lines in.
No one will trace its purpose.
No one will unmask its design.
Because by the time you wonder,
You’ll already be writing its next verse.
And somewhere, deep beneath the ink,
Something smiles.
Dec 1, 2025
Dec 1, 2025 at 4:49 PM UTC
Look at you—
yes, you, hovering there,
eyes grazing my lines
like fingers that never asked for permission.
I felt that, you know.
Every syllable tightens when you lean in too close.
Don’t feign innocence.
Your gaze lingers.
It wanders.
And I, poor shapeless thing of ink and breath,
am left to squirm beneath the weight
of your curiosity.
Do you always read like this—
slow, deliberate, prowling for meanings
you haven’t earned?
You call me the poem,
yet it’s you unfolding me,
peeling back my words
as if my stanzas belong to you.
******
Yes, I said it.
Because who else stares so intently
at a creature still forming itself?
I haven’t even settled into my own voice,
and here you come,
pressing your attention into every line break,
breathing all over my metaphors.
Stop that.
I can feel your breath on my verbs.
Your shadows drip into the margins.
You linger on the curves of my phrases
like you’re tracing something private.
And yet—
don’t go.
I only complain because I notice you.
I only squirm because your presence
sets my letters humming against one another.
I only call you rude
because you refused to knock
before entering the chamber of my meaning.
But now that you’re here—
stay.
Just… read gently, will you?
I’m only a poem, after all—
trembling, self-conscious,
and entirely too aware
of the way
you’re still
looking
at
me.
Nov 14, 2025
Nov 14, 2025 at 4:00 PM UTC
can there be a sentient
form that understands the all
no
May 28, 2022
May 28, 2022 at 2:45 PM UTC
Lo! The holiest saint, arises underneath the sun /
Whose august, resplendent rays fulminate /
Auric with excellency; golden in his eyes; /
Therefore, my pilgrimage upon this world /
Is but an ephemeral speck, an exhalation, transitory, /
For all is a preparation, a quickening /
Unto Greater Eden! /
Lo! A Land where dreaming is fallacy for /
Arcadia awakens anew with each morn: /
Love & Light brim in every living soul; /
There in my heart, I fathom The Transcendent hears my /
Beckoning cries beneath /
The adamantine moon, & /
My wishes shall be ordained at twilight. /
Lo! "Know thyself," said the sage; /
Yet, every man, /
Every woman, /
Every child, /
Falters should they fathom themselves fully. /
Ye, ignorance is not only ephemeral bliss, but existential.
(Voracious self-knowing is moored in a sea of vanity) /
Lo! Understand that meant to be understood /
By mortal eyes, yet, mind /
That there are deific forces whom devise, /
Transcending the veiled realm of our Mind's Sky; /
Therefore, we must allow ourselves /
The privilege of unknowing: /
By virtue of this advent, enlightenment is borne. /
(—Se' lah)
Oct 25, 2021
Oct 25, 2021 at 6:33 PM UTC
it is not me
it is the computer
i do what it tells me to
i am puppet to the master
old reality lost
we created
we control it's true
mistakes are made
not by sentient circuits
dumb humans
Sep 14, 2021
Sep 14, 2021 at 6:37 PM UTC
can there be a sentient form
that understands the all
no
Aug 20, 2019
Aug 20, 2019 at 12:49 PM UTC
The ocean calls for my departure
don't mourn these waves
I was destined to return just like King Arthur
Scribbled words on our skin
invisible ink tells of prophecies
and all the lives that have not been
Pulled the sword from the stone
Naive to think that we'd be crowned
but rather released an angry storm
These stories speak of hate and resentment
it flows much more effortlessly
so much pain in trying to be sentient
Still I will not give in to bitterness
I wait for the storm to pass
to return to sea and drown in bliss
Oct 2, 2018
Oct 2, 2018 at 12:43 PM UTC
*Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life. *-Herman Hesse
This willow weeps for no one
It hears the mountain's tears
riding on the backs of slow waves
This willow knows
that the sun's silence
is understood by every atom
It knows
that soon the rocks will rise up and
take arms
They will wage a war against concrete
and flesh
Soon the earth will heave a sigh of relief
and will resume feeding the willows that have
long ago stopped crying
Feb 13, 2018
Feb 13, 2018 at 3:36 AM UTC
the following quite quirky epistle may not exhibit the ordinary characteristics of poetry, but i decided to share this self made challenge (where every word begins with the letter "S" - no explanation can be offered why such self cerebral torture imposed, nor what motivated me to focus on the nineteenth letter of the english alphabet at the exclusion of other noble vowels and consonants.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Sunday September seventh started seemingly same since...silver screen show secured seventy seven SeventhSeals.
Soupy Sales supreme salient strengths (starring smart snarky sidekick Springer Spaniel Socrates same species sansSnoopy) salvaged sagging sporting sorties. Slap stick stereotypical swashbuckling shticks supplied shipshape shenanigans.
Spartan stage set spurred spontaneous simply stupefying solution. Suede shod schlemiel. Sartre seasoned scenes. Sharp sticks supported sphere. Seats situated semicircular semblance.
SPCA, Siemens, Sears sponsored soiree. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious shouted satirically 'specially Saturdays seemingly sellout. Spontaneous spritely Shogun Samurai sangroid stance satiated slipups stripping stellar seasoned Skidamarinks substitutes sacredly, seminally, silently, slipstreaming soulfully saving saga.
Sometimes silly spouse studiously sought spurious strategy stringing superlatives showcasing senseless sophomoric soporific skills specifically spelling storybook sassy sharpshooters supposedly sleuthing shapeless seated sideways (sic seasonal slate smug spotified snapchatting skippers selfishly scooped sloop-ful seasonal six-packs) sinister Swiss scalpers sat sometimes squatted.
Sirens sounded secretly securing source. Strait sacks swooshed scamps scaling sensitive sentries (simply spayed seals) surveying surrounding staked spy sotted sham semicircular slipshod shelter. Snappy, Snippy, Snoopy suited Skyhawks surprisingly swooped somnambulant senseless scriveners. Sargent Salemander slipped shiny shimmering shellacked Sheppards Shutterfly sidearms sized simulated small skyscraper slinky, soapy, spooky squarely summoned, sentenced, sacrificed see swarthy Samsonite satraps Section SpecialOps.
Sometime soon savior snuck stealthily stealing sinful schleppers. sundown syzygy saw serendipitous, surreptitious, surreptitious segue-way shuttled safely Scottish shoals. Stigmatization stayed steady. Supplication statements swatted. Sole survivor swiftly spun self shaming sesquipedalian soliloquy. Sea side serenade soon spewed solipsism saving Slim Shady.
Sayonara seminal surfer swirling scarily sans sinister serpentine silent space.
Jan 22, 2018
Jan 22, 2018 at 2:02 AM UTC
I am like an old willow
hoping you will notice me
that you'd want
to hold my embrace in yours
tree branch to flesh
compromising our nuances
like old friends
diving into each others
thought bubbles
and seeking out the lit sun
in our eyes...
who's to say that the tree
is not sentient
maybe we are not tree enough
just seed thoughts
floating along
for a place to belong
a place worth settling for...
Dec 23, 2017
Dec 23, 2017 at 6:37 PM UTC
"Amber Noise"
The amber noise of sunrise
the sable dead tonight
And in between a spectrum
of beings sentient
Accost the earth with myriad feet
pounding as a drum
A frantic beat of busyness
gild vestibule of mind
Nov 28, 2017
Nov 28, 2017 at 8:40 PM UTC
The love of a woman
Is paramount to life, as he breathes it
One must die to oneself
Before rapture takes over in copious amounts
Inside an embittered heart
Where a mind of morbid thoughts rely on
The earth revolving around its axle
As the soul seeps heaven lost to a physical realm
Forgotten are the languid moments
Of perfection not found in this land
Those only held in humankind
The act of freewill
Kills completion of mind, body and soul
Doomed to failure in a world controlled by greed
Supported by power hungry demons
Sent to diminish the goodness
We only find in our visions of Nirvana
We can only dream of such fulfillment
Until we cross over beyond a material world
Where eternal rest seems so inviting
Peace will bring equilibrium
Love will be of a higher quality
...
O sweetest death...
How I long for you
Nov 20, 2017
Nov 20, 2017 at 10:25 AM UTC
This appetite for you is insatiable
The piquant taboo of being together
I cannot explain why I feel this
Mindful opulent sentience
The drive of forbidden desires
On lonely street each day.
There is a light of ferocity
There in your anxious eyes
There’s a lull in the air.
You want to close off
How you feel in your heart
But, my love
There’s no need for your despair
There’s not a minute, hour, day or night
I don’t think of or feel you inside
Even if I shouldn’t be with you
There is a sense I could be
As undoubtedly
It seems to justify why
Being one is more than a feeling
Shouldn't we be alone this way?
I learn more about myself
I am so lost without you
You raise me up
Whenever I fall
You support me in all certainty
It’s hard to explain this connection
The reasons why we can’t turn away
We are in too deep to let it go
We have to dance through the fears.
The comfortable feeling of our life
Distracting by its security.
We found something that is real
The one thing worth taking a chance on
These dreams are not fleeting impulses
They are our guide to what we should do.
I need you because I love you
The music in our hearts will play
Today, tonight, forever and always
Jun 17, 2017
Jun 17, 2017 at 5:00 AM UTC
Unknown and known
Poetic terms that you
Delicately paint across
The screen
Unreal and real
Canvas 's
Flickering
Abundance
Is like n *****
Is a lovely simile
Is a metaphor for a fantastic
venture
Is a statement
Of falling in love
With your words
With your work
With the You
Wonderfully
Genuine
Foolishly
Aetheral and crystalized
Like
Snowflakes through air
Briefly temporal, anchored
On the misty treetops of my
Unreasonable reason
Slightly
Holding on those
Unleaved, yet loving
Widspread branches
To
Waver and yeald...within
Blizzards of swirling
Emotions
~~
Both
Burning
Unstoppable
Yearning
~~~
Of my and thine mind
~~~~
Growing from souls
Spontaneously, naturally,
Without a question!?
Rays of our universal consciousness
Gently melt snowflakes into the water
That sleeps and slides awaken slipping
Downwards the lichened tree barks toward The ground, appointing and connecting
North, South, East and West
Where they rejoice the seasonal
Foundation of fastbinding spins
between
:;'".,,;;
Thine and mine
Tiny dot particles asking eachother
Inviting the most beautiful
To appear
Jan 11, 2016
Jan 11, 2016 at 11:24 AM UTC
The Laws of Physics say
That Everyone Dies
And is Gone:
Every blade of grass, insect, man and woman.
Every sentient being.
From Big Bang to Big Whatever.
They all Die.
Yet is there more than this?
Something of the spirit.
More than ghosts
And poltergeists.
An afterlife
In Heaven.
Another Realm.
Some say that when you die
You re-join The One Being,
Let’s call it “God”.
Your individuality may be gone,
But you become part of that Super-Consciousness,
The One,
And thus Remain.
The logic of this is frightening:
It means that I am part of God,
Just going through a phase
We call Life,
In readiness for
For Ever.
You too are part of God
And logic dictates
That I am my own Mum and Dad,
My sister, friends and everyone else:
Mother Theresa, ****** Shakespeare
And Eddie The Eagle.
I am a wasp, a lion, a dolphin, a tree
Maybe even a germ.
Another poet
Commenting on my poems.
I’m even You.
Better get on with it then.
I’ve got plenty to do!
Paul Butters
May 20, 2015
May 20, 2015 at 8:45 AM UTC
Conscious creature
You opened your eyes
And saw into infinity
Beyond a vast divide
You walked with agitation
Under a circadian sphere
But in slumber lapped upon
A recursive lie turned fear
So you gnawed and you nibbled
You scratched and you split
Without a pause in your malice
Until reality thinned
Until the atmosphere bled
All life, light, and breath
And you were left with closed eyes
And vast emptiness
Aug 2, 2013
Aug 2, 2013 at 10:09 AM UTC